A light goes on!

Tia continues to be so straightforward that I can't believe my luck.OK she is green, unbalanced and can be a bit ignorant but she is quiet, kind, and tries to learn when you explain it to her right. And oh so pretty! Her feet will soon be ready for a little road work, I think, so I need the weather to perk up a bit as we were in a snowstorm again this morning.

Tetley - trumpet seranade! - was sound again today - hurrah. I was doing trot/halt/trot for about 10 minutes, after 5 minutes of warm-up walk and he was absolutely fine. He hasn't had any road work because of the weather and it may be that not working on hard surfaces is suiting him. Or it may be that 2 months of Cortaflex is beginning to really kick in, or 2 weeks of Devil's Claw, or a bit of all three. Who cares! He's as happy as larry.

Smartie??? For the third morning in a row he panicked so hard about something I did (can't remember what today, might have picked up the muck bucket) that he slipped through the shavings on his mats and fell on his face in the stable. 3rd time in 3 days that he has ended up on the floor. You'd think he'd cotton on, wouldn't you? Still, we expected additional dorkiness when Tia came, and we've got it, so no disappointment there then :-) Clicker training worked this morning. He got to his feet with his heart pounding so hard I could hear it. I put up my left hand and said "speak to the hand". I have already clicker trained him to touch my hand to get a reward. He walked over and touched my hand. He wouldn't take the treat that I offered him, but he looked really grateful to have remade a connection with me.

Now, I have been monitoring something for several weeks before reporting to you. You know that we have hypothesised that there may not be enough light for him in the barn to feel secure? Well - for several weeks he has, most nights, been turning on a light. There are three very big rocker switches side by side. It's difficult for something the size of his nose to turn on one and not the others. About a month ago, one of the lights was sometimes on. Then as the days went by one of the lights was normally on. Then for two weeks, he has been reliably turning on the floodlights (bright staring white lights) in the middle of the barn, the middle switch of the three. For the last week, he has been turning on the sodium light instead, (orange, gentle light), at the end which is over his food. There is another one over the water and where he sleeps but he has never turned that one on.

I figure he found the lights when he was fiddling with stuff in the barn over night (he fiddles with anything you leave in there and in fact he murdered Buck Rogers as some of you know :-) ). Then when he found that he could turn them on, he liked being able to see and did it deliberately. Now he has discovered that he can turn on a gentle set over his food and still give himself a nice dark end to sleep in, so that's what he is choosing to do. It is just too consisten to be an accident. What do you think???????????????

C